Nouns — Les noms by Dawn-Michelle Baude, Ph.D.

Nouns are names of things. In English, you've learned that object names, like “pencil,” are nouns. So are place names, like “Paris” or “San Francisco.” And there are the “person” words, like “man” or “Theo,” that are also nouns.

Since there are so many things in the world, we need a lot of noun words to keep track of the objects, places and people in our lives! Most of the words in any language are nouns. Here are some examples of nouns in both English and French:

IMPORTANT TIPS TRUCS IMPORTANTS

You know how you write 33,515 with a comma between the 3 and the 5? Well, the French put a period there, so it's 33.515. Don't forget to swap your commas for periods when you write down big numbers!

English

French

desk

bureau

flower

fleur

bird

oiseau

cup

tasse

arena

arène

restaurant

restaurant

beach

plage

star

étoile

woman

femme

doctor

docteur

artist

artiste

Alexander

Alexandre

Singular and Plural — Singulier et pluriel

Just like in English, you add an “s” to the noun to say that there's more than one. One chair in French is a chaise, so two chairs are chaises. But words in French that end in a bunch of vowels get an “x” instead of an “s” to show they're plural. And words that end in “s” keep the “s,” whether they're singular or plural.

Singular

Plural

bureau

bureaux

fleur

fleurs

oiseau

oiseaux

tasse

tasses

arène

arènes

restaurant

restaurants

plage

plages

étoile

étoiles

femme

femmes

docteur

docteurs

artiste

artistes

Masculine or Feminine? — Masculin ou féminin?

In many ways, French nouns are just like English nouns — but in one way they're not. French nouns have “gender.”

Gender means that there are masculine words and feminine words. For example, fleur is a feminine word, and oiseau is a masculine word. A few words, like artiste, are not really one or the other, so they get to be both!

To decide whether a noun is masculine word or a feminine word, all you have to do is learn whether it's preceded by a un (masculine) or a une (feminine). Un/une do the same job as “a” in English. Look at how it works:

English Noun

Masculine or Feminine

French Noun

a desk

M

un bureau

a flower

F

une fleur

a bird

M

un oiseau

a cup

F

une tasse

an arena

F

une arène

a restaurant

M

un restaurant

Learning “A” — Apprendre “Un”

French kids learn their nouns with an un or an une so that they remember whether the noun is a masculine or a feminine word. Why? Because it's hard to know which is which. There's no real reason why étoile (“star”) is a feminine word and vent (“wind”) is a masculine word, but it is: une étoile, un vent. It's difficult to explain. Better just learn your un and une from the start.

Both un and une become des in front of a plural word, no matter what the gender. So un lit becomes des lits, while un vent becomes des vents.